


Draw Me Closer

by ElloPoppet



Category: Marvel, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Artist Steve Rogers, Avengers Compound, But Not Badly Hurt, Cute, Drawing, First Dates, Flirting, Fluff, Hurt Clint Barton, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Pre-Slash, Self-Esteem Issues, Short & Sweet, Titanic References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-14
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:34:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25256269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElloPoppet/pseuds/ElloPoppet
Summary: “Clint?”“Mmyep?”“Do you think… would it be okay for me to draw you?”Clint choked on his coffee.
Relationships: Clint Barton/Steve Rogers
Comments: 34
Kudos: 176





	Draw Me Closer

**Author's Note:**

> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> This tiny little idea has been sitting in my idea masterlist forever. I needed to get my creative juices flowing between chapters of my two multi-chapter fics, so I wrote this in about 90 minutes. I hope it's okay!
> 
> Enjoy :)
> 
> -EP

“Clint?”

“Mmyep?”

“Do you think… would it be okay for me to draw you?” 

Clint choked on his coffee. 

The flush that filled Steve’s face started somewhere beneath the collar of his shirt and crept upward, the rouge doing nothing to dull the bright blue of his eyes as he flitted his gaze back and forth between Clint’s wide stare and the wall behind Clint’s left shoulder. He cleared his throat while Clint continued to splutter. 

“You don’t have to say yes. It’s just - you have a great profile. With your, ah…” Steve stopped talking and gestured broadly toward Clint with one hand. “... face.”

Clint squinted across the table at Captain fucking America. It was 12:48 pm on a Tuesday, the new recruits would be waiting for Clint to start their sniper training in eleven-minutes-something-seconds, he had woken up seven minutes ago and hadn’t brushed his hair. He had a butterfly bandage on one cheek, a hole in the sleeve of his hoodie, and he was fairly positive that his socks didn’t match. 

And there sat Steve, blushing in front of a notebook with a charcoal pencil in hand, blinking across the cafeteria table with his shoulders squared as though he were staring down a battalion, unwilling to back down from the awkward situation that he’d started by _asking for something that he wanted._

Clint thought about it for a beat; what it would be like to lean back in the chair right then and there, in the middle of the compound cafeteria. What Steve’s eyes would feel like roving over his exposed throat, the curve of his cheekbones, the bend in his nose where it had been broken. Panic, ice cold, rose like the tide up his spine and sent tingles up the back of his neck. Clint opened his mouth and drew a breath. 

“Uh,” Clint said, wincing at his own elegance. “Don’t you think you should buy me dinner first before I let you draw me like one of your French girls?” Humor was always a great way to deflect, right?

At first, Steve’s face looked as though it might _fall_ , settling into something neutral, before a huff of laughter escaped, the reference visibly clicking. “I didn’t quite have anything like _that_ in mind,” Steve said, his blush taking on a whole new tone, and Clint couldn’t help himself; a grin bloomed on his face. 

“Well that’s good to hear, ‘cuz I got nothing on Kate Winslet,” he joked, standing up and pushing his chair back. “I got baby agents at 1300. Catch you later, Cap?”

The chill of Clint’s anxiety began to subside with Steve’s small smile and nod as Clint walked away from the table. Clint wasn’t an idiot; he suspected the subject wasn’t entirely dropped, but he also knew that Steve could take a hint, and so he pushed the odd exchange from his mind, shifting his focus to wondering if he and the newbies would all make it through the next few hours unscathed. 

He bet they would. And in the end, only two of them wound up in medical, so all in all, it wasn’t _too_ bad.

*

Clint had barely been back to his apartment for an hour when FRIDAY notified him that he had a visitor. A fully dressed (boots still on and laced) mound of still-bleeding exhaustion, Clint groaned from where he had buried himself beneath the covers of his bed when the AI’s voice came through his aids. 

“Agent Barton, Captain Rogers is requesting that I notify you of his presence at your door.”

“...FRIDAY, does he know I got shot in the thigh with an arrow?”

“Captain Rogers was made aware that your right thigh was grazed with an arrow during your training, Agent, and that your wound has been properly tended to. He is your Captain, he knows all.” 

“Yeah, yeah, FRI. You sound like Tony now, with the dramatics.”

“Boss would hardly agree, I’m sure.”

Clint groaned one more time for emphasis and rolled himself out of bed, pulling his blanket along with him because it was _warm_ and _comfortable_ and he was _in a mood, Steven._

At least, that was what Clint was prepared to say when he opened the door to Steve. What escaped his mouth instead was a startled “Helng?”

Steve smiled, pink cheeked and stance rigid where he stood in front of Clint’s apartment in a well-fitted suit and tie, large plastic bag in one hand, a messenger bag hanging over one shoulder and… was that a…

“Did you bring me a six pack?” Clint blurted, head fuzzy with confusion and a touch of mania because _what the fuck._

Steve’s smile broadened, and Clint chastised his stomach for the embarrassing display of somersaults at the sight. 

“I did. I didn’t see any pain meds in your report from medical, figured it would be okay. I texted Scott, he told me you liked this kind, that it would go well with dinner?” Steve held up the bag in his hand, presumably a takeout bag. “It’s from the Chinese place, down the street? You always seemed to like their szechuan chi-”

“Holy tapdancing fuck, you bought me dinner,” Clint said, and it was far more breathless than he had intended it to be, which couldn’t be helped, really, because Steve was there with dinner and beer in a _suit_. 

Steve licked his bottom lip, caught it with his upper teeth for a moment. “I really want to draw you, Clint. If that’s okay.”

Clint’s heart hammered in his chest, blue eyes meeting blue eyes, and he cocked his head. 

“That all, Cap? You do all this cuz you wanna draw me?”

Steve’s eyes widened a fraction and his mouth opened quickly, as though to assure Clint that of course that was all, of course he simply wanted to draw Clint’s crooked and broken face, but he stopped himself with a small inhale of breath, audible to the both of them. 

“... no.” Steve himself looked surprised at his answer. “No, Clint. I want to draw you, because your angles and shadows and eyelashes shame the stars, but I. I want… I want.” Steve looked helpless, but it was all that Clint could have imagined wanting to hear. 

“You got your notebooks and pencils in that bag?” Clint asked, mouth and throat dry, already leaning back to give Steve entrance into the apartment. 

Steve nodded, hesitant and hopeful, and Clint motioned him inside.

“Well, then. Since you asked so nicely.”


End file.
